


Destroy Me (Fall Out Boy version)

by Pinchetta



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Blood, Crying, Cutting, Depression, Drinking, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt, Mental Breakdown, Sad, Self-Destruction, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Suicidal Thoughts, Triggers, Vodka, drunk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-30
Updated: 2014-07-30
Packaged: 2018-02-11 00:27:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2046063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pinchetta/pseuds/Pinchetta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pete has a drunken breakdown after the death of someone he knows.... ((Trigger Warning: severe self-harm and alcohol abuse))</p>
            </blockquote>





	Destroy Me (Fall Out Boy version)

**Author's Note:**

> **I have also written and posted a MY Chemical Romance version of this story which has a sequel. The two versions are not related.**

Swallowing snot and tears, Pete clung to the vodka bottle with shaking hands and brought it to his lips again, chugging as much of the bitter liquid as he could in one go without puking all over the damp smeared floor. He’d been locked in this bathroom for three hours now - a dim gray space inside a dirty motel in a nowhere town - and nothing else was real for him anymore. It was just him and the alcohol and the deep despair gripping his throat and rotting his guts, leaking from his brown bloodshot eyes in streams of stupid tears. He didn’t want to feel this way anymore - fuck crying and fuck feeling any of this shit! - so he was trying to get so drunk he lost his mind and just felt numb inside. Feeling nothing at all had to be better than being crushed by all this sadness. He should've brought more pills.

  
Screwing his dripping eyes shut he swallowed another couple of shots worth and shuddered, queasy, as his head swam and he sank backwards against the stained toilet. It was hotter than hell in Florida tonight and his skin was slippery with sweat and stuck to his damp clothes. His black hair hung wet over his eyes and the air in the bathroom was heavy like a sauna but despite the heat he was shaking and he prayed that this meant alcohol poisoning was already setting in and fucking with his brain.

  
Another swig of the sharp clear liquor brought a wave of darkness crashing over him and when he opened his eyes again he was sprawled on the cracked linoleum floor watching the bottle roll away from his clammy hands. An ocean of alcohol bubbled in his belly and he badly needed to vomit but lying down felt good right now and he couldn’t find the will to get up. Belching loudly, he tasted bile and started sobbing again and couldn’t stop, even when he punched himself angrily in the face to stop the tears spilling down his cheeks. ‘Why wasn‘t it me?’ he screamed to the empty room, ‘Why didn't I fucking die there?!’

  
Dragging a heavy hand over his eyes, he cursed himself for falling apart like this and forced his body up onto its elbows, scraping his ribs against the floor. Desperately, he reached for the lost bottle but his clumsy fingers found a half-empty beer can instead. Well, anything would do so long as it made him a little more numb and a little closer to passing out. Or dying. He didn’t give a damn about what happened to him anymore as long as he could forget about the last few days.  
Sitting up drunkenly against the bathtub, Pete watched the tiny room blur in and out of focus and drained the can dry before chucking it at the open toilet bowl. He missed.

  
Thirty-six hours ago, he had bailed on the second funeral he’d attended in a week, ripping off the sad black suit like it was suffocating him and dressing in shabby street clothes before fleeing to the nearest airport, desperate to get out of Chicago and out of his skin before he exploded. He’d boarded the first flight available, not caring where he might end up because he never wanted to go back. He had nothing to go back to.

  
With his head and heart aching so much he could barely breathe, he’d got drunk on the flight and spent a long dark day lying sleepless in a moldy Florida motel room before trudging outside into unfamiliar streets to find a liquor store. Later on, hung-over and dizzy from a mild overdose of his antidepressant pills, he’d called Chloe and rambled down the line at her answering machine after she hung up and refused to talk to him. Chloe had once been the love of his life and now she wouldn’t even return his calls. She hadn’t even sent flowers for the funerals. He couldn’t believe what a hateful bitch she had turned out to be.

  
When his cell phone ran out of power he smashed it against the wall, took all his remaining booze into the bathroom and locked the door, determined to get so drunk he might die because he couldn’t take anymore pain right now and there was no one left to talk him out of it. He wanted to drown the storm of anger and sorrow in his chest and forget all about Chloe and her voice and her smell… and the sight of the coffins in the cemetery. God, he NEEDED to forget about all the endless sad faces. The broken windshield in the car. The blood on the steering wheel.

  
‘Fuck,’ Pete sobbed to the empty bathroom, soaked in salt-water as sweat and tears ran down his face and neck. He couldn’t feel his legs anymore but he wanted to keep drinking until he blacked out and floated away from this hell. He hated himself for not being able to cope with so much tragedy but he just wasn’t strong enough and he couldn’t take all this disaster. Not all at once, not when he was alone, not now.

  
He wanted the vodka back but the bottle had rolled too far away and his blurry eyes couldn’t find it. Reaching up with shaking hands, he gripped the edge of the bathtub and dragged himself to his feet, swaying dizzily for a moment before staggering over to the sink. Leaning woozily over the basin, he took a few rough breaths while his legs shook under his wasted body. His hazy reflection looked pathetically vulnerable and sad and he screwed his eyes shut on the sight of himself crying like a child.

  
Groaning, he retched violently as nausea rocketed through his body and puked about a gallon of booze into the sink. Gagging on the rank bile as it splashed his face and hands, he threw up another mouthful and then another, his whole body aching. Coughing and gasping, he wiped his mouth on the back of his arm and lost his grip on the sink, collapsing to his knees on the floor and hitting his head against the basin on the way down, knocking over a complimentary drinking glass which smashed into broken shards on the tiles next to his body.  
Blinking woozily at the shattered glass while his head spun and vomit dribbled down his chin, he finally started blacking out and welcomed the darkness like a friend… only to wake up a few seconds later with the bathroom’s cheap lights burning into his eyes like flares. “FUCK!”

  
This nightmare was never going to end, how could it when there was nowhere to wake up to? It was reality that had killed his friends and fucked with his genes and he felt himself being crushed and strangled by grief and the thought of living with his depression and mania forever hurt him deeper than anything else he felt.  
Trembling with panic and drowning in bad memories, he pounded his fists against the slippery floor and heard a sudden scraping sound between his left hand and the linoleum. Opening his weepy eyes he saw a piece of jagged glass lodged in the side of his palm. He hadn't even felt it go in. Staring in breathless fascination, he grabbed the edge of the shard with two numb fingers and yanked it free in a small spray of blood, panting with shock and relief as the tiny jolt of physical pain distracted him from his emotional hurt. But only for an instant.

  
Sitting up slowly, Pete stared at his bleeding hand and the crimson droplets falling slowly away from his flesh, taking some of the filthy depressing world away too, like waves washing over a sandy shore. A drunken, exhausted calm settled over him and suddenly he couldn’t feel anything at all. It was as if he was watching someone else’s hand and watching someone else bleed, like a movie on a screen.

  
Biting his lip as the tears dried on his cheeks in lines of salty crust, he watched in a daze as a trembling hand that didn't feel attached to him at all picked up a long jagged spear of glass from the floor and stabbed it deep into his left forearm, dragging it cruelly through his wrist and making a long vertical slash. Too numb with shock, grief and alcohol to feel the acute pain of his horrific injury, Pete let his hand keep slicing: raking down through his arm towards his elbow, cutting though skin and fat and thin red veins in search of more blood and more distracting physical sensations…until there was so much red gushing out of his arm that it looked like a river.

  
Licking his lips, tasting sweat and vomit, he whispered a single stunned word as his head got so light he was almost floating above his own ruined body: “Wow.” Crimson liquid flowed onto the floor in a pool of warm wet red and everything seemed so endless and silent. He could finally feel his consciousness slipping away… maybe forever this time.  
But wait...was forever what he wanted?

  
With a mental crash his floating, drunken mind slammed back into his body and the nerves all along his arm exploded in searing agony. It hurt so bad he instantly began to weep and moan, trembling with trauma. What the fuck was he doing?! Gasping in pain and panic, he dropped the slippery piece of glass he’d used to mutilate himself and stared in horror at the deadly mess he’d made. Blood was streaming from his veins and spraying down his arm as the pain got worse with every heartbeat. His olive skin was turning paler than the gray bathroom floor and he couldn’t breathe properly. Oh shit! OH SHIT! OH FUCK! The harsh reality of his own impending death, the true gruesome pain and the terrifying fear, hit Pete like a sledgehammer to the face and he felt his heart beating hard enough to break his chest. He didn’t want to die here, not tonight, not alone! Not ever! No, no, NO!

  
Grabbing a white motel towel from the tub he pressed it down hard over the worst of the bleeding and watched it quickly soak through with red. He needed help! Where was his phone? Oh god, he smashed it didn't he! Crawling weakly towards the locked bathroom door, he felt his eyelids getting heavy as his body trembled and alcohol-thinned blood poured out of his arm too fast for him to stop it. His stomach hurt and shadows were flickering in the corners of his vision. Life was leaving him forever, just like his girl and his friends and everyone else, and he was scared out of his mind. Everybody leaves eventually and everybody dies but no one wants to go too soon. This was too soon! This was...

  
***  
Patrick was feeling hot and tired and pretty damn scared today. He’d been chasing his best friend Pete for nearly two days now trying to locate him and bring him home and now that he had almost found him he was starting to dread what he might find.

  
Yesterday he'd managed to track down the GPS location of Pete’s cell phone and followed it all the way from Chicago to Pensacola in Florida and when he'd arrived, sweating in the tropical heat, he used up most of the money he'd earned this month bribing the owners of the local motels into confessing if Pete was staying with them. At the third place he’d got lucky and even got his hands on a spare key to Pete’s room. It was amazing and a little sad what sixty bucks could do.  
Up until a few days ago, he hadn’t seen Pete in weeks. Not since their band had ground to a halt for a while and the four band members had gone their separate ways to work on new projects, hang out with their families and generally just fall into loneliness and boredom.

  
Then last week Andy had called Patrick with some disturbing news: Pete had been driving at night with a couple of old friends, guys Patrick barely even knew, and they'd had an accident. The car was wrecked and Pete was the only survivor. He'd managed to escape the crash unharmed but had to sit alone with his pals' mangled bodies for twenty minutes before help arrived and he wouldn't answer Andy's calls. Remembering how bad Pete's mental state could get when tragedy hit him hard, Patrick called his friend half a dozen times and only got his answering machine before he finally went out looking for him and found him wandering aimlessly through a park in Wilmette looking miserable and pale behind Rayban sunglasses. He'd given his friend a hug that wasn't returned and offered Pete his condolences and a shoulder to cry on but Pete only sniffed and shook his head before walking quickly away, his pockets rattling loudly with fresh pharmaceuticals. Patrick was too disheartened to chase after him.

  
On the day of the funeral Pete had left town without a word to anyone and Patrick had been following him ever since, out of his mind with worry and hounded by anxious phone calls from friends, Pete's parents and even some savvy music journalists who had heard something was wrong. It was a total disaster.

  
***  
Shutting the motel room door quietly behind him, Patrick took a nervous breath of stale air and looked around the dim, curtained room, scared of what he might find. “Pete? Are you here?” he called softly, “It’s Patrick.” Nobody answered. Pete’s bed was unmade but empty and his jacket and a broken cell phone were lying on the floor beside some crumpled paper bags, torn-up photos of Chloe and an empty bottle of whiskey. Patrick tried his hardest not to freak out at this little pile of ruined things. “Pete?”

  
The last time Pete had been dumped by a long-term girlfriend he’d locked himself in his apartment for three days taking cocktails of prescription pills and drinking himself stupid until his friends had managed to talk some sense into him through the door. “Pete!” Patrick called louder, gazing anxiously at the closed bathroom door across the room, “Are you in the bathroom, dude?” Approaching the door, he listened for the sound of water running or Pete throwing up but all he heard was silence. When he tried the door handle it was locked from the inside. “Pete, I know you’re in there! I just… I need to make sure you’re okay. Please? Everyone's so worried about you. Pete?”  
Still no answer.  
Starting to panic, Patrick banged on the door with his fist and rattled the handle. “Come on Pete, this isn’t funny! Answer me!”

  
***  
Somewhere far away Pete could hear a distant drumming… or rumbling thunder… and someone shouting in the dark “Answer me!” Was that Patrick's voice? Dragging his ruined arm towards his face, Pete watched through fading vision as blood continued to flow into the widening pool under his body. He must have passed out trying to get to the door. Funny: the wound didn’t even hurt that much anymore…

  
“Pete!” Patrick’s voice bellowed. The poor little guy sounded really freaked out and with an effort Pete rolled onto his back and looked up at the misty gray shadows of the bathroom, wondering why he couldn’t see his friend. “Patrick?” he slurred tiredly, “Where are you?”  
“Pete, hey! Why didn’t you answer me before? Are you okay?”  
Patrick’s voice sounded muffled. He must be outside the bathroom. Ohhh...

“Come on, man, talk to me, are you okay?”  
“No,” Pete sobbed hoarsely, “I did s-something stupid...”  
“What?”  
“It w-wasn’t me,” Pete groaned, watching the bathroom ceiling spin like a merry-go-round, “It's my hands...I dunno....”  
“Okay, you sound really wasted. Please let me in, just open the door, okay? I don’t want you to pass out in there by yourself.”  
“I can’t…”  
“Just open the door!”

  
More silence from the bathroom.  
“Pete!” Patrick yelled again, his heart pounding, “Please just…” Then the rest of the words dried up in his throat as he leaned closer to the door and smelled the reek of puke and blood coming from behind it. “Oh god, Pete what have you done? Can you get up? All you have to do is let me in and I can take care of the rest. I'm calling 911, just hold on okay? You NEED to let me in!”

  
On the bathroom floor Pete trembled weakly with trauma and fear as the blood drained out of his body. Trying to see past the dizzy haze in his eyes, he managed to prop himself up on his right arm and crawl closer to the door. The bathroom was shimmering with fuzzy lights and peppered with clouds of darkness. He felt like he was going to puke again and his t-shirt was soaked in sweat and blood. The distant drumming was much louder now and it vibrated through his sliced-up skin as Patrick pounded on the outside of the door, trying to break it down.

“Pete, wake up! The ambulance is coming, just hold on!”  
“Patrick…”  
“Yes, it’s Patrick, can you unlock the door for me? Please! Come on, Pete, you can do it…” Patrick sounded like he was crying now, “Please unlock the door...”  
Listening to his friend's broken voice helped Pete’s dying brain stay conscious as tears and blood ran in wet, itchy trickles over his skin. His arm hurt like hell and all he wanted to do was puke and pass out but he knew he couldn't. Dragging himself stubbornly across the floor, he slipped and slid in the mess of his own blood several times before finally reaching the door and lifting his good arm towards the handle.  
“Help is coming Pete... Can you still hear me?!”  
“Uh huh,” Pete panted as he stretched towards the latch on the door handle. His vision was almost gone and all he had left was a fading sense of touch, but he just had to reach the handle and unlock it and everything would be okay. “Pete...are you s-still there?” Patrick sounded like a frightened little kid and the last thing Pete felt as his trembling fingers finally found the latch was guilt because he'd upset his friend so much.

  
***  
“Pete? Hey, look at me...I’ve got you now, I've got you.” Patrick’s voice was much closer now and something soft was wrapped tightly around Pete’s bleeding arm, which seemed to be floating above his head. Sirens were wailing in the street, getting closer and closer, and Pete forced his heavy eyes open long enough to glimpse his friend’s pale, worried face. “Hey Pete...you did it, you opened the door.” Tears were shining in Patrick's blue eyes and they spilled down his cheeks when he blinked and landed on Pete's upturned face, “It's alright now. Y-You’re gonna be alright...”  
“You're lyin',” Pete whispered drowsily, his eyes locked on Patrick's as the room around them faded to black.  
“No I'm not.”  
“Mm...y’are.” It was getting hard to form words now. “Sorry Patrick....Didn’t w-wanna…I didn’t...”  
“Shhhh, I know. It’s okay. The medics are gonna be here now and they're gonna take care of you so please just stay awake now, Pete. Just stay with me...This is all gonna be alright...”  
“No,” Pete sobbed as he passed out in Patrick’s arms and the world went away at last, “It‘s not.”

 


End file.
